From the depths of the ocean I greet you. David and I are transmitting twenty thousand leagues under the sea in the grips of an angry squid, its tentacles whipping clouds of silt which obscure the gleaming treasure that is its sacred duty to guard. Beside the movie-set threshold of its dark furious eye we've pulled together a post!

In other news, the site is no longer hacked. I've also fixed the forums, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, mostly on my part. It seems that the heat generated by my exertion and the gray cloud which rose from my body after exhaustion deflated my weary frame mingled in computer alchemy to make everything right again. I couldn't really repeat what I did but there you have it. Water droplets bead on the window sill just for you.

I hope you enjoy this apocalyptic submerged holiday tsunami special of romantic intrigue. Though seemingly unchanged, David has snipped up this script and rearranged all the pieces in to a collage made from subconscious magazines with some sort of bright lights 50s post modern burning, but hopelessly square effect. Who knew?

This a kind of a sequel or sister episode to NOW IS NOT GOOD, generally hailed as our creative pinnacle, the radiant summit from which we can now only tumble helplessly towards flaccid irrelevance. With that in mind, we hope readers will enjoy this reference to a simpler and perhaps happier time.

We join events a few hours after Paul's perplexing and abruptly-ended phone conversation with Dale. This time we follow me, as I behave in a similarly avoidant manner to Dale, plunging unnecessarily to frightening depths, although at least I made it to the party. Meanwhile, Paul is enjoying himself immensely. The master of every social occasion, Paul wears Santa Claus's hat with panache; the old man stuck it on his head in a gleeful fit. Forty-five minutes later in the bathroom, while pulling up his pants Santa remembered his hat, or at least noticed its absence, though he could not recall what he had done with it, and as he steadied himself against the sink, one eyelid behaving erratically, he developed suspicion towards a young woman who had found comedic use for him among her friends. He had been maneuvering his girth through a dense spot in the room, catching glimpses when possible of the brunette by the fireplace, holding his white Russian as high as possible to prevent further spillage after a bit splashed his white cuff, although this method was ill-conceived and only made his task harder. But that girl -- he had heard her laugh -- wasn't she speaking with a young man, smartly dressed and well-built, and did she not cast a look his way as her smile spread, showing too much of her gums? She was vulgar, Santa thought, but transfixing. His thoughts strayed once more, now to the miniature hot dogs which had somehow been part of that shifting careening world out there, the party... His vision seemed unusually sharp, but there was a delay, the room rotating a moment after his head turned. The towel over the bidet was a hue of peach which he did not like.

With this issue we also make our first overt reference to actual real events occurring outside of our immaculate comic reality. I predicted the arrival of Christmas months ago, but the tsunami caught everyone off-guard. Please don't call it a commentary; it's only a reflection, the way a shard of glass has no choice but to display whatever person or tsunami passes before it. Unwillingly, like debris tossed by a furious current, we align with the pattern of the day.

We've received another review, this one from The Carolinian Online. Thank you to the paper and Mr. Lowrance. (Visitors to their site might be asked to sign up. The process is fast and requires no email verification.)